Shims tight from sitting?

[Guest]

I tore into checking and adjusting the valves on my '80 550L. What I found was that I couldn't fit even my thinnest feeler guage (.0015) in, except for #2, which I could get the .0020 in. Waaaaaay to tight right?
A little history- I picked up this bike after it had sat for a long time. It has 15,000 original miles. Don't know for sure when it ran last, but the last time it was registered was 1990, and the last registered owner died in 2001. I cleaned it up, serviced the carbs and electrical, and got it running. It never ran on the #3 cylinder, but I wanted to know the valve condition before I go chasing ghosts.
Long and short, for the mileage, they seem really tight. Can the valves just tighten up over time sitting there? Am I overlooking a basic maintenance issue that needs to be handled before I get an accurate reading?
Oh- compression was good before I tore into it last fall. Can't remember exactly, but all were close to where they should be

-thanks!

[Nessism]

Valves tighten with mileage. Bike may not have ever had the valves adjusted before. Neglect of maintenance kills a lot of GS's. Good thing you got your hands on it...

[tkent02]

They tighten up from being run, that's why they need to be adjusted. They can't wear if it isn't running. Set them where they need to be, then fix all of the other things.

More of these bikes got parked back in the day due to tight valves than anything else.

If it has run 15,000 miles from new with no adjustments it's likely to have a bunch of tight valves.

[bwringer]

This is very typical -- 10,000 to 15,000 miles is where the valve clearances tighten to the point that a neglected bike becomes hard to start.

One day, the battery ran down before the owner at the time could get it to start, and the bike hadn't been running very well anyway for a while, and it wasn't much fun to ride any more, and so he pushed it to the back of the garage. Or out to the barn. Or worse, out next to the barn...

[MatBirch]

Thanks Guys!
I shall continue forth!
bwringer- sounds like a pretty likely scenario. Seen it a time or two have you? All you're missing is-
As he says to himself "I'll look at it this weekend"...

[tkent02]

Over and over and over again.